Dr. Greg Thornbury: Can College Be Saved?

Professor Thornbury is president of a very different kind of school, The King’s College in Manhattan. He joins Jeff Deist to discuss everything wrong—and everything that could be right—with universities today. Dr. Thornbury’s prescriptions are radical: make education a la carte, offering a mix of degrees, certificates, and micro-certificates. Tailor programs to teach specific skills, and shorten the time undergraduates spend in school dramatically. Insist that all graduates have rigorous writing and public speaking skills. End the publishing model for academics, and replace it with a focus on classroom skills and open inquiry. Finally, make sure students still learn enough about history, philosophy, ethics, classics, languages, and rhetoric to navigate life beyond the digital world.